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Bonin Bough is a gregarious executive for a digital era. Imposing
in ambition and wit, the vice president of global media and
consumer engagement for Mondelēz International strives for
authenticity in his every interaction.

In an effort to energize staid brands, Mondelēz's accelerator
Mobile Futures is deploying new social and
mobile innovations. For example, the snack-food company is
pairing its Trident gum with mobile music app Lisnr to give
consumers exclusive content via TV and social sites.

We sat down with the F100 marketing veteran (formerly with
PepsiCo) who's keeping a sharp eye out for game-changing ideas.

How do you capture the spirit of entrepreneurship within
a big company?
I think there is a shift happening now where we are open-sourcing
innovation. When Mondelēz and Kraft split, we asked ourselves,
"What does the future of a big organization like ours look like?"
We see ourselves as the world's largest startup. With Mobile
Futures, the goal is not just to identify startups we want to
work with, but also to create cultural transference so that we
are closer to entrepreneurship and better business partners.

Isn't the creative incubator team always at the mercy of
the parent?
Big organizations suffer from politics, regime change. The thing
is, those who "think different" actually grow inside of big
organizations, but it takes a certain kind of talent who is
willing to be different. The org is inherently built to create
non-risk-takers, and yet this is all about risk immersion.

When all is said and done, isn't this just R&D on a
longer leash?
It's co-creation at scale with partners that can mutually benefit
from success. It's the evolution of R&D.

It's almost like there's no difference between what
Mobile Futures is doing and what an investor does.
Except that we provide the case study. I've worked with startups
for 10 years. I have helped them go from an idea on paper to [in
six months] being in 21 markets, 19 languages. If you get into
businesses like us, almost overnight you could be at scale. It's
crazy not to look at it.

How does Mobile Futures evaluate success?
First is our collective ability to execute on the 90-day timeline
of the program's first phase. Second, we want culture. Part of
partnering with a startup is going and working directly alongside
the startup. So for up to two weeks our brand marketers have to
work at the startup's offices to understand what that culture's
like. It's key since, whether a pilot works or not, it's really
about, Have we actually had an impact on the culture here?

In your opinion, where do the big ideas come from these days? Do
you think that some of the technology greats like Tim
Berners-Lee, Vinton Cerf or even Marc Andreessen would have
succeeded in a corporate environment?

For us it's about making sure that we're helping to recruit the
next Marc Andreessen to come and reshape who we are as an
organization and bring that spirit. Make no mistake about it--we
are celebrating a type of behavior to create a specific type of
culture. It's not about risk-taking for risk's sake; it's about
seeing the trend, identifying opportunity and seizing a moment.

Mobility creates a world of connected things. Every single thing
will be connected--including, eventually, our packaging, pricing
schemes for our retailers and our supply chain. We are going to
be catapulted into being one of the world's largest technology
companies.

We launched seven mobile-innovation pilots in the U.S. in less
than 90 days. Now we have a structure to replicate that. We need
to not only build that culture of behavior, but also to recruit
the type of folks who are going to be able to think that way and
want to work inside the organization.

Andreessen and Berners-Lee are brilliant, so they would've done
brilliantly inside the organization. I think they would've had to
do a lot of the same stuff that we're doing now, which is to
continue to push the organization to create platforms to
structurally bring about that innovation culture.